40 yrs of Chicano Studies

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Old 10-07-2009, 09:42 AM
ilbegone ilbegone is offline
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For various reasons, one side wants to flood the country with people from Mexico. The immigrants, legal or not, have children. Some of those children become educated and have a purpose, get into all levels of education and all levels of government. Everything to do with enforcing immigration laws is made to be difficult, while social services are virtually pushed on new arrivals from south of the border. Meanwhile, multi generational kids who don't know the difference between Der Weinerschnitzel chili and a Mexican grandmother's version of Mole Poblano are inundated in school with a selective version of "Mexican" culture in school simply because of the tint to their skin.

However, educational achievement for that demographic is virtually unchanged from forty years ago, despite all the "programs" and "interventions" which weren't there forty years ago.

Latinos are more likely to be drop outs, despite curriculum which caters towards them, and drop outs are much more likely to be involved with crime.

There is the statement that funding programs is more cost effective than incarceration. However, where is the money going to come from? Why do we, regardless of race, have to cater to one ethnicity's inherent back ground cultural problems? Why aren't these children encouraged to assimilate in school rather than pointed back to Mexico at every turn? Race doesn't make for attitude. Why the attitude?

I look back at The Labyrinth of Solitude, wherein Octvio Paz writes in 1958 to the effect that the "Mexican" of Los Angeles doesn't want to be a part of either Mexico, or America, that he goes out of his way to be different and, even though he knows it is dangerous for him to do so, intends to offend.

I'm going to have to reread Paz. But, why the general attitude which leads to failure in America society? Can money thrown at that issue actually solve the problem?